


He stuns you by degrees-

by angelheadedhipster



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Flashbacks, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Shooting, Spies, Yuletide, john le carre for all the things, tragic ruined boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:34:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/pseuds/angelheadedhipster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their eyes meet, and he thinks of that old saying, that in the moment before you die your life flashes before your eyes. That isn’t quite what happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He stuns you by degrees-

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feverbeats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/gifts).



> Dear Yuletide darling, I hope you like this! I tried to give you what you asked for. Also, I can now recite the entirety of "Casabianca" from memory, so that is available to you as well, upon request.
> 
> This is sort of a mish-mash of book canon and movie canon for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," with as many details as I could scrounge up from both.
> 
> Thanks to [kirenamuln](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kirenamuln/pseuds/kirenamuln) for betaing!

Until he sees Jim, it had not actually occurred to Bill that he might die. Even now, caught and imprisoned, his thoughts had never turned to the actual moment of death, to the physical possibility that this yard at the Nursery would be the last place he would ever be. He just hadn’t thought of it.

He knows, as soon as he sees a shape in the forest, what will happen. He recognizes the way Jim walks, his easy lope, though now it is more cramped, more scuttling, favoring his back. A pity, that. Watching Jim move had always been a joy; he moved through the world like he belonged to it, strode through space as if he understood it on a more fundamental level than Bill did.

Bill knows what will happen, and yet when he sees Jim he feels that same lift, somewhere below his heart but above his prick, that he always feels. It has never gone away, and it doesn’t go away now. _This is not so bad_ , he thinks. Staring death in the face, and only seeing his best friend.

Their eyes meet, and he thinks of that old saying, that in the moment before you die your life flashes before your eyes. That isn’t quite what happens.

-

 

> When Bill got the call about Hungary he was already twitchy and jumpy, irritable from waiting and from reminding himself that he was in control, that this was for right and good. It was not the first time he’d thought of Jim while he was with Ann, although tonight he had every reason to. All night, Ann would talk and he would see Jim’s face, the hooded eyes slitted and accusatory, his lips twisting.
> 
> This wasn’t the plan, the call was too early, but all the details flew from his head when he heard that Jim had been shot. Shot. His stomach dropped, and he felt his heart start to race. He saw blood when he closed his eyes.
> 
> London was dark and wet as he sped to the Circus, and he was vaguely aware that he was doing things out of order, leaving threads to be untangled by anyone careful enough to spot them. He didn’t care. Jim had been shot, Jim was hurt. That was never, ever part of the plan.
> 
> The Circus was in an uproar when he got there, phones ringing, everyone completely bewildered as to what an agent was doing in Hungary in the first place, let alone being shot at. Bill felt his nerves crackling in his ears, an anger starting to build at the root of his spine, hotter and fiercer than he had felt in years. He was spitting into the phone now, his voice a whip. “Tell your superiors what will happen to them if they harm _one hair_ on his head.”
> 
> This wasn’t the plan. This was _never_ the plan.

-

Jim’s eyes are on his face now, and he looks as sad as Bill had ever seen him, even as he raises the gun, even as he looks through the scope, looks at Bill.

-

 

> He opened the door and saw Jim Prideaux on his front stoop, and there was a moment, even then, when he thought he ought to lean in and kiss him. Grab him by his drab tie and pull him inside, ravage him like they hadn’t done in years (less years than people thought, but years all the same).
> 
> But that wasn’t what Jim was here for. And that wasn’t what Bill used him for, now. Now what he used him for was much worse.
> 
> “Can I come in? I need to talk to you. There’s…a mission. Tomorrow. Control told me not to talk, but I’m worried. I want you to know.”
> 
> Bill wanted to say no, wanted as hard as anything to tell him to leave, go home, go to Hungary, get out. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t say no to Jim, he never could. That was the problem all along.
> 
> He tried to look as blank as possible as he opened the door.

-

Jim pauses, and his head rises from the scope. He looks like he is about to cry. For a second, just a second, Bill wonders if maybe he won’t go through with it, and the thought comes with a pang of disappointment. He wants Jim to get what Jim wants.

-

 

> “Operation Testify must be Prideaux,” said Polly. “Karla said, and you know too. Hungary is only place, and he is only person.”
> 
> Bill looked out over the dark streets, the pools of light over the river. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.
> 
> He’d made a show of having to be convinced, though he didn’t know for who. For himself, maybe. The truth was, he wanted it to be Jim, just as much as he knew it had to be. It should always be Jim, he thought.
> 
> Only a few people on the planet knew that Bill Haydon was the fulcrum on which the Cold War turned, and only Bill Haydon knew that Jim Prideaux was the still point around which Bill Haydon orbited. No one knew it but Bill, but it was Jim who controlled this war, and so this moment, this deciding step - it had to be Jim.
> 
> “All right,” Bill said to the still air. “Jim Prideaux, then. I’ll make sure it happens, though of course Control hasn’t told me anything about the mission.” He smiled, sideways and without his eyes, though of course Polly wouldn’t know the difference. “Apparently, he no longer trusts me.”
> 
> Guilt was not something he felt, not anymore. Guilt was for the ants who crawled along on the surface, convinced of the relevance and importance of the little lives they lived. Who understood the world in terms of offices and documents, and not the great sweeping changes of history. There was no room, in history, for the individual and his petty grievances. No room for regret, for bedroom dramas to play out on the world stage.
> 
> And so they didn’t. There wasn’t. They weren’t.

-

But the pause is to cock the rifle, which Jim does, and then his eye is in the scope again.

-

 

> Jim had been abroad, cleaning up some things for the janitors, so it was several months after Bill’s final meeting with Karla before he saw him. Just walked past Jim in the hallway, ignoring the leap in his stomach and heart; he was too old for that now. Jim had turned and smiled, asked after his girl, his work. They laughed at something, some trivia, and Jim looked at him like he always had. Like he would follow Bill anywhere, but always two steps behind, and with a question in his eyes.
> 
> The secret was thrumming in his veins, his own private reality that admitted no one else. Power that was his, and his alone. Knowledge that could tear the world down, if he choose to let it. The threads were in his hand, to do with as he wished.
> 
> Each new person he saw, each loyal colleague or friend - each was a new prize, a new person to outshine, a new canvas onto which to project his own truth.
> 
> Jim made it that much realer. Jim knew everything about him, everything, but not anymore. They had been one continent, together, but now they were rent asunder and Bill was drifting across the ocean, an island unto his own. And Jim didn’t know. He thought they were whole.

-

He can feel the wind in his hair, the cold damp smell of the Nursery. He watches Jim’s finger on the trigger.

-

 

> Jim’s finger was trailing down his stomach, inching closer to his cock, ruffling the hair below his navel as it went down.
> 
> “Stop teasing, you bastard,” said Bill, sounding throaty and lust-hazed.
> 
> “I’ll tease if I want to,” Jim said, his voice low and smooth, his eyes following his finger lower. Bill was instantly even harder, if that was possible. And really, it shouldn’t be possible, they’d been fucking for hours. They hadn’t left the room in he wasn’t sure how long, stopping only to piss and nap when they absolutely had to. “Besides, I’m not teasing. I’m giving you time to recover from the last one.”
> 
> “All right, I’m recovered, hurry up,” Bill said, the muscles in his stomach tensing as Jim’s hand finally, finally found his cock. “Oh, god,” he moaned, throwing his head back, hair in his eyes. He could see the ceiling now, the same ceiling he’d been staring at all term, while getting wildly fucked or with a mouth on his prick. He wondered, with the few brain cells that weren’t completely focused on Jim's finger being replaced by his mouth, whether just looking at that ceiling could make him hard now.
> 
> Jim sucked and licked, the only sounds in the quiet, sweaty room, until his tongue and lips stilled. There was sweat breaking out on Bill’s forehead, and his shoulderblades were sticking to the sheets. He felt completely debauched. “Oh, no, don’t stop, please.”
> 
> “It occurs to me,” Jim said, pulling off with an absolutely obscene last lick at the head, his voice deliberately conversational, as if they were discussing a cricket match. Bill groaned aloud, anticipation building in his toes and the back of his mouth. “That technically, I believe it is your turn.”
> 
> Bill lifted his head up to stare at him. Jim’s face was carefully blank, but there was a smirk at the corner of his mouth. As their eyes met, Jim started stroking him, long, strong fingers.
> 
> “Also that you still owe me for at least two rounds from the pub two nights ago,” he continued, deliberately casual, even as his hand moved faster, “and that we never finished that argument about Romanticism because you challenged me to a race down High Street. Which, incidentally, I also won.”
> 
> “So?” Bill gasped, his chest tight, his fingers twisting in the sheets.
> 
> “So,” said Jim, and his voice was even slower as his hand sped up, “you owe me rather a lot, don’t you, and here I am, doing you a favor. What do I get out of it?”
> 
> “What-” Bill cut himself off with a moan as Jim’s licked one long stripe down the underside of his cock, from base to tip. “Oh, god, anything, just, please.”
> 
> “Anything? Do you mean that?”
> 
> “Anything, always, always anything, _please_.”
> 
> Jim grinned, one of his rare smiles, a grin that broke out over his whole face, turning those sharp lines into something graceful.
> 
> Bill felt himself falling, even before Jim lowered his lips and took him all the way in, sucking him down to the hilt. He came, hard and fast, explosions behind his eyes. And in the rush and the whiteness, he felt a pull, something that might have been more than just good sex.

-

There is a burst of pain, his face. His cheek.

-

 

> It had been a rubbish night, all around - the cheap coffee was giving him a headache, as was the incessant prattling from all these children around him. As if anything said in some richly upholstered Oxford club made the slightest bit of difference to the world at large, as if anybody was even listening, rather than just waiting their own turn to speak. They might as well be discussing horse racing, or the bloody weather.
> 
> He glided past a clutch of boys with thick eyebrows emphatically discussing the rights of the proletariat and rolled his eyes, hoping to find a corner where he might sneak a little more from the flask in his pocket into his dreadfully democratic coffee. He let a hand brush across the backside of the best-looking comrade as he walked by - they would never notice, not unless he groped while shouting anti-Marxist slogans.
> 
> He was still smirking to himself when his eyes fell upon...someone. Someone _new_. Heavy dark brows, a face of sharp planes and angles. Skin that looked like it could stop a bullet. A pronounced Adam’s apple that Bill already wanted to lick. The face was familiar, actually; he was fairly certain they’d met before, or at least seen each other, but Oxford was a small place. Now he looked so very new Bill couldn’t imagine how he had lived this long without him.
> 
> He was already that much closer to the other boy; his body seemed to have made the decision to go to him without even asking, while his mind was stuttering in place. He was staring, he knew it, and the other boy’s eyes met his. Dark eyes, hooded in his face. Strong eyes, focusing on him now, and Bill felt a shiver go over him. If he had his way, those eyes would never focus on anything else.
> 
> He walked over and stopped in front of the new boy, feeling that the night was just beginning. Hell, maybe his whole _life_ was beginning.

-

He falls.


End file.
